A Better Man
by HeidiBug731
Summary: Dumbledore faces Gellert Grindelwald in their historic battle. The wizarding world expects Albus to play savior, but there are just some things he is not strong enough to do.


I certainly didn't want to walk into those woods. I knew he was waiting for me, but so was everyone else, waiting for me to do something, to step up. I couldn't put it off any more, but I was afraid, afraid that he had answers to questions I had carried around for years, afraid that our meeting would bring up emotions I had buried deep and prayed would never resurface.

He _was _waiting for me, leaned up against a tree and lazily charming a fly with his wand. Wherever his wand moved, so did the fly. He looked up from his entertainment as I approached and smiled at me. "Hello, Albus."

"Gellert." I hadn't seen him since my sister's death. I was surprised how much older he seemed after only five years. He'd had a charm about his physical features when I had known him. Perhaps the deaths and dark works had taken a physical toll or maybe my realization as to his true nature had disillusioned me, but his face appeared more twisted and cruel, less handsome.

He went back to playing with the fly.

"Leave it," I told him.

"Why?" he said. He turned to me, still twirling his wand. "It's only a fly." With his free hand, he reached up and crushed the bug in his fist. Then he opened his hand and let the tangled body fall.

I remained where I stood, my wand drawn as it had been since I had entered the woods. My eyes fell to the grass where the fly's body had vanished.

"I'm sorry," said Gellert, pushing himself up from the tree. "You didn't like that."

"No," I admitted, not looking up. Since my sister's death, I had gained a respect for lives I had once thought beneath me.

"The greater good, Albus," he said. "Was that not what we talked about?"

I did look at him this time. "I hardly see how the death of a fly benefits the greater good. Unless you are going to tell me that fly was of some threat to you."

Gellert smiled. "That humor of yours, I've missed it."

I softened at those words. Suddenly, it was just the two of us back in Godric's Hollow. We were two good friends enjoying each other's company with no deaths or evil doings to taint it.

"So," said Gellert. He lowered his wand, and I did the same. "Are you here to fight me or join me?"

"You know I haven't come to join you," I said.

Gellert turned to me and held up his wand to show me. I stepped forward in wonder. I had, of course, heard he had found it, but I had never actually seen it.

"The Elder Wand, Albus," he said. "I found it. And we can find the others: the stone, the cloak. They can be ours, just like we wanted, if you help me."

My eyes lay fixed on the wand and its simplicity. It was so beautiful, so tempting. Gellert had found the wand and surely with our combined determination we could find the stone that I wanted so badly. With it, I could bring back my mother and Ariana.

Poor, Ariana.

The trance was broken and I stepped back, shaking my head. I couldn't. Ariana was the first to pay the price for Gellert's and my lust for power, and I was determined she would be the last.

"Too many people, Gellert," I said to his inquisitive face. "Too many deaths."

"For the greater good, Albus!" he stressed again. "We were made to rule, to lead this world in the right direction! You said so yourself!"

I shook my head. "I was wrong, Gellert." How many times had I turned down the position of Minister of Magic? I knew what power did to me, what it made me into. "Power blinded me and it now blinds you." Oh, how I wished he could let it go as I had, that we could return to those childish days at Godric's Hollow where I had been happy. "Ariana died because of my blindness. I will not become that man again."

Gellert paced and ran a hand through his dark hair. "Did you ever find out which one of us it was," he said, turning to me slowly, "who killed your sister?"

My voice caught in my throat and I had to force myself to swallow. "No."

"I did," he said. "I know."

I closed my eyes against the words I knew would come.

"It was you."

"No," I said.

"It was you, Albus."

"No."

Gellert stepped forward and placed his hands on my arms. His face was twisted in vile determination. "You killed her!" he shouted it. "It was you! Blood is already on your hands!"

"No!" I raised my wand arm, blasting him away from me. "No! That isn't true!" I fired my wand at him again.

And then we were dueling through clashes of light and sound. The two brightest wizards of the age attacked each other out of raw anger and frustration. He needed me for him to succeed in taking over, and he hated that fact and hated me for denying him.

I wanted him. Our friendship had been a treasure to me, to have someone who matched my own ambition and intellect. But the lovely, brilliant boy I had known had become filled with cruelty and greed. Part of me hated him for it, and part of me hated myself.

Ariana was dead because of us. The memory still plagued me, and he knew it. He had tried to use it against me. I knew his words were lies, that he didn't know which of us had killed her any more than I did. But he had put his fist in that raw, gaping wound and twisted it. He had thought it would weaken me, but it gave me strength and I lashed out in a hot flurry of anger I hadn't felt since the day she died.

When the two of us were finished, there was a clearing in the wood where there hadn't been before. Gellert lay on his back beside a tree, and I held his wand in my hand.

I had won, but my anger still burned and I pointed The Elder Wand at him, ready to strike.

"Albus," he pleaded.

His face softened and for moment I saw the boy I had once called my friend. That goodness in him that I had loved still existed somewhere inside, buried deep.

I withdrew the wand and turned to walk away.

"I need you," he called after me.

I sighed and turned back to face him. "And I need you," I said. "But I don't think either of us is going to get what we want."

I turned again and didn't look back. I walked from those trees with my name ringing in my ears as he called after me the entire way.

While Gellert was restrained and taken to his prison, I apparated to my office in Hogwarts before I could be engulfed in celebrations. I fell to my knees on the floor and cried into my hands. I cried for myself and my foolishness, I cried for Gellert and the man I had lost, and I cried for my sister and how I had taken her for granted. When I had regained control of myself, I realized I still held The Elder Wand in my hand.

A better man would have snapped it in two and thrown it in the lake, but I was not that man. It was a Hallow, after all; I could not bring myself to destroy it. I would keep it. Not to kill, I told myself, but to revere it and tame it. In my hands, I thought, it would never kill another soul. I would master the Elder Wand.

Yet even that was a lofty dream.


End file.
